Today Is Hindi Diwas But Here Is Why Some Indians Are Not Happy About It

The hashtag #हिंदीदिवस was one of the top trends on Twitter through September 14 to mark the day when the decision to make Hindi Indian Union’s official language was taken. But not everyone was happy about it. A hashtag, #GOIMakeMyLanguageOfficial, started trending almost simultaneously urging the government to make all of the 22 scheduled languages of the country under Schedule VIII of the Constitution of India as India’s official language.

Everyone had their reasons to highlight how the choice of Hindi as India’s official language is disadvantageous for the speakers of other languages, which are official languages in their own home states.

The campaign originates from Karnataka, one of the five South Indian states where even the language family, Dravidian, is different from the Indo-European language family of the North.

In fact, most of the tweets were from people in the South, where language has been a contentious issue for decades now.

Hindi is aggressively promoted by the Government of India at all levels. There is a Department of Official Language under the Home Ministry which promotes the use of Hindi.

The Constitution of India Article 343 states that “The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script.” The Constitution states that Hindi is the “official” language in India, which means that the Union Government will use the language in everything concerning it. But since Hindi is spoken by the largest number of India’s population, it is assumed to be the national language. In January 2010, the Gujarat High Court ruled that there is no record to suggest that Hindi is the national language of the country.